


let bleed your rusting heart on these stones--

by Dialux



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: (hint: it does), Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Non-Chronological, Thoris loves her father and grandfather a lot, also an exploration of sister-hood, and damn everything she will wear this fucking crown, and will not allow them to ruin her people, because the thing that breaks thoris, but she is her mother's daughter, i have feelings and will pull you down this rabbithole, if it kills her, is not the deaths of her mother or grandfather or brother-, it's the death of her sister, the one where thoris has a girl-crush on Galadriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:29:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7579447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all her life, Thoris burns; and dragonfire is the least of her scars.</p><p>[Or: the gender-swapped femslash AU nobody ever asked for.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	let bleed your rusting heart on these stones--

**Author's Note:**

> Thorin is Thoris, Bilbo is Bilba, Frerin is Freris, and Dis is Din. Follows canon, except for the places it doesn't.

**[sixteen]**

_ I will protect you,  _ Thoris had said, and she did not.

_ I will love you,  _ Thoris had said, and that had not been enough.

_ I will conquer the world,  _ Thoris had said, and she  _ would,  _ because she needed one thing to be a truth.

**[ten]**

Thoris cradles her grandfather’s corpse and believes herself empty of tears.

When she comes across Freris’ body, unhurt save for a stab wound in the left breast, she understands herself to be a liar, and that there is not a single person she has fooled more than herself.

_ I always said you’d give your heart up too easily,  _ Thoris thinks, and rubs a finger over Freris’ golden curls as if trying to lull her to sleep.  _ One last time,  _ Thoris thinks, and then the grief splits her wide, wide open.

(The lays tell of Thoris Deathsinger’s valkyrie-dirge at her dead sister’s side.)

(They say nothing of a steel spine or a fury so deep an oak branch served as her sword. They say Azog is dead, and Thoris bares her teeth: she does not believe specters die such an easy death.)

There is precisely one person who knows why she never wears armor over her left side, and Thoris isn’t talking.

**[forty-eight]**

It is not the fashion of the Longbeards to allow their dames to hold swords in their palms. Their dames are treasured, hidden, protected; but they are silenced as well- by well-meaning dwarves, perhaps, but silenced all the same. 

**[six]**

Din is her younger brother, and he dies in dragonfire.

Thoris saves her king, and her father, and her sister, and her people.

She leaves her mother and youngest brother to Smaug, and she never forgives herself for it.

**[eleven]**

Dwalin is Thoris’ closest friend, and he knows more of Azanulbizar than anyone else.

He knows that Freris snuck into the army without telling Thoris, and that Freris stood beside Thoris in battle, and that Freris died of a knife to the heart. 

He knows that Thoris and Freris always fought together, side by side, and that if Freris’ left side is open, it is because Thoris is  _ not there. _

For a terrible moment, when he sees Freris’ body, he searches the corpses for a glimpse of that beaky nose and dark hair. He does not see it, and it is not relief that spreads deep inside him: it is pity, dark-winged and knife-bright.

Dwalin stands guard beside Thoris as she kneels beside her sister, ungainly as if she were twenty once more. The song Thoris keens that night is unearthly in its mourning, and Dwalin can never hear music the same way again, after that.

**[thirty-nine]**

Thoris dies inside Erebor, three corridors away from her mother’s last stand; four from her brother’s. She shoves Bilba into the safety of Erebor’s treasury, and holds Orcrist in a loose-fisted grip, and leads the invading orcs in a merry chase across her old kingdom.

(Merry: she has not known the meaning of that word since she was born _.  _ Thoris has been called prideful, and arrogant, and idiotic; short-sighted, dangerously flawed, distrusting. She has been called a bitch, a false king, a dame reaching too far for something that is by right a dwarf’s.

But in her last stand she leads the orcs in a fucking chase across the mountain she was born inside, and she knows of no other word for it than  _ merry.) _

**[forty-four]**

Dain stands up, done up in steel like a bristly porcupine, and he brushes a hand over her face, and he does not think of the starlit girl who cared for her sister; rather, he remembers the dame who asked for an army, and the midnight fury on her face when he refused.

**[forty-nine]**

Centuries later, they call her sword-training a travesty and a sacrifice, as if she hasn’t had a wolf baying in her blood since the moment she was born, as if she could have ever lived under someone else’s yoke, as if she isn’t a Durin as much as any of her Mahal-damned ancestors.

**[twelve]**

Thoris’ hands shake all the time. They tremble, and curl in on themselves like wounded dove-chicks; they are the only sign of distress that Thoris has allowed herself in all her years. She folds them over themselves in her lap, sometimes, and allows them to cry her anger and fear and grief and humiliation when her face cannot.

And then: her grandfather dies.

Thoris allows her hands to shake as she holds his head and weeps.

(At Freris’ side, Thoris weeps; Thoris screams; Thoris wails; but here is one thing that she does not do: so much as twitch.)

**[twenty-seven]**

There are tapestries in Mirkwood that tell tales of dwarves.

Not a single one names a dame.

**[twenty-two]**

In Rivendell, Thoris is uneasy.

_ Peace, _ Gandalf had said-  _ there is peace here.  _

But when has peace ever slumbered in her bones? 

Thoris has had a fire inside of her that even a dragon could not quench; that a gold-mad grandfather, a simply insane father, a dead sister, and a century spent ruling over a band of exiles that were all but waiting for her to fail could not hope to douse- there is nothing of quiet, or calm in her. She is tempered steel, she is dragon-forged wrath, she is the Crownless Queen; and no elf or wizard or hobbit can stop her.

(In the starry gardens of Elrond, alone at the last, Thoris allows some measure of peace to rest on her shoulders. She plucks a moonflower and twirls it; remembers the blue flowers that grew on Erebor’s slopes, thick as weeds after the summer showers. 

“There are dwarves in Imladris,” a voice says behind her.

Thoris whirls around, and she sees a silver-limned elf, luminous as a star. “Who are you?” She asks, not-quite rudely.

The elf steps closer, and in a move that is nothing of what Thoris ever could have expected- picks up the moonflower Thoris dropped. It is pitiful, Thoris thinks- half-bald and already wilting at the edges.

“Call me Artanis,” says the elf. 

“Then why are you here?” Thoris asks flatly. “I am no friend of yours, Mistress Elf.”

“No,” says Artanis. “But you are a leader of your people- the first queen of the Longbeards. And I know something of wanting something so badly it burns in your chest.”

“What do you know of that?” Thoris stands, stiffly, and Artanis smiles- faint and quicksilver, like a flash of lightning. 

“I am Artanis,” she murmurs, “to my husband, and my family; but perhaps you would know me by the name I took upon arriving to Arda: Galadriel, Lady of Lothlorien.”

“And what would the Lady Galadriel know of wanting?” Thoris asks. “Of losing something so dear it is as if someone has taken your heart out along with it; of loving something so greatly it is present in everything you have done otherwise; of wanting, with every breath and every moment, to return to it?”

“I do not know what it is to lose a home,” Galadriel says. “But I know full well the cold weight of a crown, and I know even better the pain of bearing its weight alone, against a host of people who did not believe me worthy of it.”

Thoris sees truth written across Galadriel’s unlined skin. She does not see pain, or grief, or anger; but she sees honesty, and it is more than what Thranduil has ever offered. Her hands do not unclench, but she says, “I believe I shall call you Artanis,” and it is as close to an apology as she will ever get.)

(They sit together for another few minutes, the dwarf-queen and elf-lady; and then Thoris leaves- she has to see to her Company. As she does, she meets Artanis’ eye, and there is something approaching understanding in both their faces.)

**[forty-six]**

Years later, Balin sits down and writes a tale of Thoris Deathsinger, Thoris Crownless, Thoris Oakenshield.

He tells of a dame who was sharp-edged but gentle, who was beaten down by the world, who held onto hope in the middle of the deepest despair any dwarf could have imagined. He tells of her skill at swords, of her unbending pride, and of her blade-sharp tongue. 

He tells nothing of her black rages, of the way she fought off despair with only sheer, bloody-minded grit, of the edges of her forged swords- fine enough to slice a head off without splattering blood. He tells nothing of her jealousy, her anger, or her gold-mad inheritance. He gifts a story to his descendants of a beautiful, heroic Queen.

(Balin always was the most vindictive of the Company.)

There is only ever one copy- Balin writes it and lets it languish in Erebor’s library, though he could make a pretty coin by selling publishing rights. On the last page, in a scrawl that belies his handsome script, there is a single sentence:

_ Mahal have mercy on my soul, for I know that she never will. _

**[two]**

Once upon a time, Thoris and Freris lie in a hot spring near Erebor. 

“You could be queen,” says Freris, and Thoris rolls her neck lazily upwards to see her little sister. “You could be the best queen Erebor’s ever known,” she repeats, and Thoris flops backwards.

Were anyone there, she’d say  _ don’t be ridiculous, Freris,  _ and that would be that. But they are alone, and there is a quicksilver thing inside of Thoris, not yet forged in dragonfire, not yet tested in battle; it makes something rise inside of her (like fire, like her bones are tinder and her ambition is flame) every time she sees the Arkenstone and the throne underneath.

(Every time she sees the curve of a body kneeling, and the power in the shadows of her grandfather’s crown.)

She says, “I could rule this entire  _ fucking  _ world, Freris, if we’re being honest,” and her sister laughs, and she takes Thoris’ hand, and she says, “We’ll do it together,” and naive little Thoris believes her with every ounce of her unembittered heart.

**[thirty-eight]**

“Come  _ back,”  _ Bilba demands, as Thoris shoves her into the safety of Erebor’s treasure-room. 

She’s refused to stay outside while Thoris leads the charge to cleanse Erebor, and in return Thoris has gotten her to remain in the treasury. There’s something beautiful, Thoris thinks, in Bilba’s sun-bronzed skin and thick, curled hair; something quiet and deadly as a housecat that rests on a hearth and runs wild at night. 

“I will try,” Thoris says, and Bilba’s eyes flash with lightning-ridden fury. 

“You will not just try,” she says, “you will come back, Thoris Deathsinger, or I will walk into your grave and make you  _ wake up.” _

“Crypt, actually,” Thoris replies. “Not grave.”

Bilba snorts, and then looks simultaneously appalled at her manners and disgusted at Thoris’ sense of humor- which has finally started to show itself. 

“Please,” Bilba says finally, after a long silence. “Thoris: nobody else will say it. So come  _ back _ . It’ll break Dwalin if you don’t. It’ll break all of us.”

Thoris thinks,  _ then you will break.  _ Thoris thinks,  _ you can survive my death, Bilba Baggins, and you will.  _ Thoris thinks,  _ I am sorry. _

She says, “I said I’ll try. And that means I fucking  _ will.” _

**[forty-five]**

Dwalin does not weep at her grave-crypt. 

He stares and stares and stares, and then he gets up and shaves off a full half of his beard before Balin manages to stop him.

“D’you think she’d want this?” Balin asks, and Dwalin shoves his older brother aside, hard enough that Balin has to either let himself be thrown ten feet or let go of Dwalin’s hand.

Balin lets go, and Dwalin bites out, “She’s a fucking liar, and I swear to Mahal I’ll shave my beard if needed, Balin, I’ll head to the Halls and  _ punch her stupid nose  _ I will fucking  _ rip her hair out-” _

“What about Dain?” Balin asks gently.

“Fuck him,” he snarls.

Then he walks off. Stares up at the full sky of stars, full-bellied and terrifyingly open, and he thinks about a Middle-Earth where Durins walk its mountain-halls, all majestic and frustrating and  _ alive.  _ He thinks about his father’s hands, warm on his shoulders, and he remembers a bloody, gasping whisper as Fundin lay at Azanulbizar. 

“ _ Keep them alive,”  _ Fundin had charged, and Dwalin had carved that into his blood and bone and sinew.

“Fuck you,” he says to the specter of his oldest friend. “ _ Fuck you,”  _ he says again, not to mean anything but because they’d had a language all their own, the two of them, and what kind of a shit language was only spoken by one person?

Then he wipes his face on a mud-scrubbed fur cloak, and he walks over to Dain, and he kneels, and he says, voice empty: 

“All hail the King Under the Mountain.”

**[fourteen]**

They are wary of her, after Azanulbizar. 

Thoris is calmer, colder: a tempered forge and not a blazing campfire. She is honed, in grief and loss, and the very corners of the world seem to bend to her whim. If she turns her head, just the right angle, sunlight can become a flash of golden hair.

The line of Durin is not yet finished. But there is no proper heir to the throne, meaning there is no male; her grandfather and father are dead, are they not? 

She watches her father’s advisors fight, scrabbling over each other’s fur-lined coats and steel-shod boots, and she thinks about her sister’s pale hand in her own, her father’s deepset eyes, her grandfather’s terrible sort of pride.

Thoris rises to her feet.

The dwarves fall silent, watching her carefully.

“You believe I should marry,” she says, and the bolder of the advisors nod. “You believe,” Thoris continues, voice heating just the smallest fraction, “that I should marry Dain.”

“Dain Ironfoot,” says a black-haired, gimlet-eyed Lord. “He is a good match. A Longbeard, and a Durin, to boot. Princess-”

“Queen,” Thoris interrupts, and the dwarf’s mouth snaps shut. “You would do well to remember this, all of you: there are no longer any princesses of the Longbeards.” She leans forward, voice sharp as a steel-sword blade. “But you have a Queen.”

She turns and strides to the door and pauses, for a heartbeat. Her cloak swirls around her calves like a hound, and she lifts her chin, bares her teeth, leaves her grief behind her. There are wolves here, in these halls her grandfather once ruled, and she will die before she allows them to tear apart all that her blood has sacrificed to maintain.

“The coronation will be next week,” she announces, without turning her head. 

And then she leaves, walking down the comforting darkness of Ered Luin’s corridors. Her hands trace the walls-

_ -no veins of gold softening the harsh edges; no decorations drawing the eye from sharp corners; how paltry is this mountain that she has inherited, this daughter of kings?- _

-and she does not allow herself to shake.

**[forty-three]**

Orcs never make it past the doors of the throne room.

(They have a closed-casket ceremony for Thoris’ body.)

**[twenty-nine]**

Blue moonflowers litter the slopes of Erebor still, hardy against the winter chill. 

Thoris remembers a moonlit garden, and a bell-like laugh, and though there is something pounding in her lungs, something alive and fluttering and dancing- 

She does not know what to call it.

**[twenty-three]**

“I tasted your sister’s blood,” Azog crows from his white warg-beast, and Thoris feels something swell inside her breast that she has no name for.

She draws Orcrist, steps off the tree, and tastes blood across the back of her throat in the jaws of a warg. She hears a choked-off scream from somewhere; and in the gap between injury and pain, she thinks,  _ oh, Mahal, let me not end here- _

Her prayers are answered. The pain and fury and shock that stem from that surprise her, but then- when have her wishes ever been answered? 

Salvation, and faith: never has Thoris imagined it to come in the form of a hobbit, only newly-discouraged from wearing skirts and even less knowledgeable of anything deadly. 

She is left alone only at the river- to wash her face and her body- and there she stares into a reflection of bruised half-moons under her eyes, honed cheekbones, and hollowed-out wrinkles; she splashes water onto her face and chokes into the muffling leather of her vambrace and allows herself to call it laughter.

**[thirty-three]**

They crown her, and hand her a sword-scepter, and kneel at her feet.

Thoris watches them, and for a heartbeat, gold flashes across the corner of her vision.

**[twenty-four]**

Bilba is gold-shaded and freckled. She has a spine, as well, under all those curves and layers: Thoris does not realize this until she is about to be executed and is saved by a goddamn halfling with more foolishness than wit in that tiny frame.

“What were you  _ thinking?”  _ Thoris snarls, as Oin wraps bandages about her torso.

Bilba sniffs. “One would think you could at least be grateful,” she says. “Go back to the Thoris from last night. You were much nicer when thanking me for saving your life.”

“That was yesterday. We were still becoming friends. Now that we are, I get to ask where the  _ fuck  _ your head-” She lets out a highly undignified yelp as Oin’s hands poke at a series of bruises along her left side, and then settles for glaring at him.

“I told you not to move,” he says unrepentantly.

“Yes, Thoris.” Bilba pats her on the head, condescendingly. “Be a good dwarf and listen to the healer and  _ shut up _ . I’ll bring you food once you’re done.” 

Traitors, the lot of them. Thoris scowls into her bowl for the rest of the night- or at least until Bilba settles down next to her and takes the half-eaten dinner right out of her hands.

“If you’re not going to eat,” she says primly, “then I’ll have to.”

Thoris scowls harder, at that; but then, if someone looked close enough, they might have seen her lips twitch at the very edges, like the lazy heat-haze surrounding the silhouette of a fire.

**[forty-one]**

Do you know how Thoris dies?

Do you care to know how a daughter of kings dies, how a dwarf-queen lies in repose in the halls of her fathers? Do you wish to understand the flash of pain across a muscle-ripened shoulder, the way the world fractures into prisms of light; the exact play of skin loosening across jaw and cheek and neck in shock? 

Or would you say,  _ no, tell me the words and give me the summary; not the heartrending wail of a wife who is never given the chance to call herself that, not the unsteady roiling grief of a friend who loses his queen and sword-sister and better half all at once, not the kingdom that shudders in dismay as their line is ended- _

Well. Whatever you feel, however it is, let us end it like this:

Thoris Deathsinger dies, not on an open plain, not under a dragon’s claws, not for anyone’s sins but her own.

Thoris Deathsinger dies of a stab-wound to the left breast, and that, my dear, is how her story ends: the same fall as Freris Goldenheart, only a century and half late.

**[three]**

For all her life, Thoris burns; and dragonfire is the least of her scars.

**[thirty-four]**

“You  _ wretch,”  _ She hisses, pressing closer, feeling Bilba’s fear through the thin bones of her wrist. “I  _ trusted you,”  _ Thoris bites out. “I trusted you and-”

She swallows, and the betrayal slides down her throat like a thick, glutinous poison.

“ _ Get out of my sight,”  _ Thoris snarls, and drops her, and does not trust her control enough to look at Bilba’s fire-bright eyes again.

She does not keen: everyone knows that Thoris Deathsinger let go of her ability to mourn at Azanulbizar. She does not say a word, does not meet their gazes; if there is one thing Thoris knows, it is that there is no space for the dame beneath the Queen. If there is one thing she knows, it is that the moment she lets go of her control, allows herself to be anything less than the Queen she crowned herself as, she also relinquishes respect, and any hope of maintaining her power.

“Will you have peace,” Bard calls up to her. “Or will you have war?”

Thoris straightens, and lets the Queen drape herself over her bones. Her eyes are clear, and there is nothing of hesitation in her eyes when she says:

“I will have war.”

**[thirty-five]**

“You were always my king,” says Dwalin, hands loose and empty.

Thoris looks at him.

“Was I?” She asks. “Was I, Dwalin? When we had no homes, no clothes on our backs, no food in our bellies, are you telling me that you believed in me then?”

“Yes,” he says, and his eyes are level as a dwarf-forged blade. “You used to know that once, Thoris-”

He brushes a beseeching arm across her elbow, and Thoris recoils; in the heartbeat before Dwalin looks at her face, she manages to write disgust over the instinctive, wild fear.

“Get out,” she tells him. “I am Thoris Deathsinger, and I am not your king.”

Dwalin flinches at the rebuke in her voice, at the censure that edges on accusation. 

“You have a Queen Under the Mountain,” Thoris says coldly. “And you will heed her words, Dwalin Fundinul, or I will try you for treason,  _ do you understand?” _

**[fifteen]**

“How  _ dare you,”  _ Thoris says, and steps forward, and presses steel to the vulnerable line of the traitor’s throat.

“You don’t deserve to lead us,” he says, eyes fever-bright. 

“I am a  _ Durin,”  _ she hisses. “I will-”

“And for that blood,” he cries, “you don’t deserve that mantle. Your father’s daughter, grandfather’s heir, child of kings with no kingdom to rule: you will bring ruin to us, as Thror brought dragonfire for his goldlust-”

“I will flay you alive,” she says, frozen and unyielding. “I will take the bones and display them, and you will only be remembered as a traitor.”

“Then let it be,” the dwarf spits out. “Let it be! But I know the truth.” His voice lowers to a hoarse, choking whisper. “And, Queen Thoris of the Ereborean exiles:  _ so do you.” _

**[twenty-eight]**

Out of the barrels, Thoris is nauseated and pale.

She lets Bilba press frantic kisses to her beard, to her cheeks- and then she spits out the last of the bile-vomit at the back of her throat, and moves to remove her Company. Only later- much later- does she realize that it is the closest she has been to Erebor in more than a century.

**[seven]**

“I do not wish to be queen,” Thoris tells Dwalin.

They are thirty, and they are desperate; they are thirty, and they have nothing but the clothes on their back and the steel in their hands. 

Freris is calming Thrain down from one of his rages- she’s the best at it, just as Thoris is good at tempering their grandfather- and the camp has just recovered from an orc attack. 

They’d received information from scouts that morning, but Thror had not acted; and then, in a fit of desperation, Thrain had rallied their men. And yet it had barely been enough. Some of the children, though hidden best as they were able, had been injured; there were two fatalities.

And now, Thoris thinks about the weight of those deaths: she imagines them strung across her father’s broad shoulders, and along the neckline of her grandfather’s fur cloak; she feels bile claw up her throat and just barely holds back vomit.

Dwalin’s hand rests on her waist, a warm, comforting weight. 

“Thoris,” he whispers, and drags her further into the shrubbery so she is better hidden from the camp. “Thoris, what is going  _ on?” _

And Thoris is weeping, is shaking, is gasping- is feeling the terrible weight of two children that are  _ dead,  _ that are never going to grow and see the kindness of the world, that are dead and gone and dead and dead and dead-

And what had her father said?

“ _ We must push on tonight.” _

As if they could bury the children in the hours before sundown. As if the deaths were not strung across their king’s shoulders. As if they could not have avoided it all if not for Thror’s mindnumbing greed.

“I cannot be queen,” she confesses, and feels it bow her shoulders.

Dwalin frowns. “Why not?”

“Because to rule,” Thoris says, sharp and hard and unyielding- “to rule is to let go of compassion, and kindness. And I cannot do that without dying.”

**[forty-two]**

Oh, yes: Thoris dies.

**[eight]**

Freris wraps warm hands over Thoris’ bruise-black ones. 

“Sister,” she says.

“If Father ever tells you to do something like this,” Thoris says, almost soundless; no less fierce for it- “you will come to me, and you will follow your heart. Do you understand, Freris? Mahal made us with hearts and minds and souls, gave each of us a part of him.  _ We will not dishonor him.” _

“How are we dishonoring-”

Freris cuts off with a squeak as Thoris bares her hands, faintly flinching; Thoris smears the blood across Freris’ uncallused palms and lets it tell its own story.

“We, also, are daughter of the great,” she says, head held high, tears burning hotly behind her eyes, something deep and deadly growing in her chest. “And have wills and minds of our own.”

The next time Thror orders an  _ armed incursion  _ into a Man-village, Thoris keeps her sword sheathed and Freris behind her. She is not given food for three days for her cowardice, and Thrain holds a knife to her throat that night- dissuaded from slitting the throat of his own daughter only by a shaking Dwalin and tearstained Freris- but it is little price to pay for the cold rage swirling beneath her breast.

**[forty-seven]**

_ [An excerpt from  _ ‘Childhood Poetry in the Fourth Age,’  _ by Ori Risson] _

There is much clan poetry to be recorded during this time, from the cooks’ stew-songs to the miner’s gem rhymes to the nobility’s blood-history; but of more importance to this publication are the linguistic features common to the entire population of Erebor.

[...]

While we have spoken of the effects of the great wyrm Smaug’s claim on Erebor for a little less than two centuries, perhaps the greater influence on popular culture in the Lonely Mountain can be traced to the tragic death of Thoris Deathsinger, only Queen of the Longbeards.

Of particular note is the bastardization of the  _ Lay of Thoris Deathsinger and her Company,  _ which contains a number of popular turns of phrase that pepper Longbeard colloquialisms.

Example:  _ Long live our noble queen/ strong on the blighted fields/ rule o’er all of us/ steel-swords as glorious/ long live our noble queen _

Example:  _ Tears fell at Azanulbizar/ smoke rising to Elbereth’s stars/ and so did Deathsinger mourn/ e’er after she did not weep _

The phrase ‘she did not weep’ is a common phrase amongst those who wish to communicate something of great duty, even if one wishes not to do it. It implies stoicism and hard work. 

_ Author’s note:  _ Indeed, because Thoris Deathsinger certainly exemplified those ideals- it is hard to imagine that she would be unhappy with her legacy.

**[thirty-one]**

“Long live the Queen,” Dwalin roars, dragonfire silhouetting his broad, axe-shadowed shoulders.

**[thirty]**

When Thoris steps into Erebor at the roar of a dragon, she thinks of a pale-faced hobbit, and of a milk-white stone, and of a white-skinned dwarf.

The gold of Erebor’s hallways blurs together into something that might be hair.

**[thirty-six]**

In the depths of her madness, Thoris hears a laugh that she has almost forgotten, bell-sweet and stone-deep. 

In the end, it is Bilba who drags her from her mental anguish and leads her to sanity, cajoling her in all the methods Thoris has learnt from the real Bilba Baggins- but it is Freris, in her mind, who opens the door.

**[thirty-two]**

Smaug dies hanging over Laketown, killed by a man who balances his family’s only inheritance on the shoulders of his son. Thoris watches it happen, and decides that it is not guilt curling at the base of her stomach.

**[forty]**

“I am not yet dead,” Thoris snarls into the black-bristling mess of orcs, standing between them and the throne room. They have not yet desecrated the heart of Erebor- which has always been the throne, no matter what Thror named a stone- and Thoris will die before she lets them enter.

“That can be arranged,” says the orc-leader, starting forwards.

Thoris lets her arms loosen, and in one movement that is smooth, that is elegant, that is not dwarvish at all but all elven grace, she lops his head off.

In the gap between action and reaction, she smiles: nasty, and cruel, and vivid as blood on her blade.

_ Come and get me you bastards,  _ she thinks, something pounding in her blood that has always run too hot, too fierce for anyone’s comfort;  _ come and get me! _

**[five]**

“Be wary,” her mother had whispered once, brushing a cool hand over Thoris’ brow. “Love and live, Thoris, but never be blind.”

If Thoris remembered a time before the dragon, if Thoris allowed herself to remember her mother’s cool, calm kindness, she would break. And so she doesn’t; she lets memory slip out of her callused palms like sand, and doesn’t dare look back.

(See, she looks west enough for that.)

(But if she did: Thoris would laugh, and laugh, and laugh.)

**[twenty-five]**

Bilba kisses Thoris like a storm, all bites and teeth and tongue. 

Thoris had wanted to maintain some dignity, going slow and gentle for Bilba’s genteel sensibilities- but once she actually kisses her there’s no going back, no amount of control that can stop her from shoving Bilba up against the cold earth and letting her heavier body press up against Bilba’s smaller form.

“Wild little thing,” Thoris hisses, and Bilba laughs, head thrown back and flushed.

“Nobody’ll believe you,” she tells Thoris.

“That’s alright,” Thoris murmurs, scraping teeth along the curled edge of Bilba’s throat- “It’s nice that I’ve a part of you all to myself.”

Bilba shudders and curls one hand over Thoris’ head, tugging on her side-braids half-impatiently. “Don’t be  _ crass,”  _ she says.

Thoris grins, wild and brilliant and ferocious, and then she mouths at Bilba’s breast through her shirt; moves a hand to the juncture of her legs.

“Thoris,” Bilba says; her hands are trembling, her little furred feet arching; Thoris twists her fingers and swallows her scream and then brings herself off lazily, watching Bilba’s shaking gasps. 

It’s not peace- not kindness, not softness, either; just something slotting into place between her ribs that she’s never known to exist before. Thoris allows her muscles to go lax and her back to bow a fraction more, and it feels like a sort of accomplishment.

**[seventeen]**

There is a story that the older children of the Blue Mountains tell the younger: when the wind blows at the correct angle, a moaning whisper can be heard if you are brave enough to climb that high.

_ Let it be,  _ cries the wind, cries the mountain, cries the sky-consigned skeleton of a traitor to the only Queen of the dwarves.  _ Let it be! _

**[eighteen]**

“What is a Queen without a crown?” The Blacklock ambassador sneers.

Thoris allows her hands to sweep together, flat and pale against the dark wooden table. They do not tremble at all.

“What is an ambassador,” she asks pleasantly, “without intelligence?”

The ambassador flushes under her beard, and there is true animosity in the angle of her gaze. Thoris smiles, and it looks calm- she has learned to place a veneer of enamel over the raw edges, and it makes it all the more dangerous. 

“My worth is in my people, not any throne that my forefathers ruled from. As long as they are happy my rule, I will continue to do so.” She waits, and the ambassador tilts her head slowly.

“It is nice,” she says, “to treat with a Queen, after centuries of meeting with Longbeard Kings. Can you imagine! Their greed, their  _ bullheadedness.  _ I tell you, leading with dames has always been the better way to go.”

“My grandfather was not always as he was in the end,” Thoris says mildly.

“No,” the ambassador replies: “But he was not half as reasonable, either.”

_ Reasonable,  _ Thoris thinks, and feels her lips twitch.

A week later, the ambassador leaves Ered Luin with a treaty that shears Blacklock profits down to almost half of what they were previously. Thoris does not allow her smile to get smug- but when Balin knocks his shoulder into hers, she does smirk.

**[thirteen]**

At the plains of Azanulbizar, Thoris tastes smoke across the roof of her mouth and doesn’t ever think she’ll get rid of it. She stares into the blue-hot flames licking at Freris’ pale gold hair, and there are no trembles marring the perfect line of her shoulders.

For the century and half after, no tears ever fall from her eyes.

**[nine]**

The first thing to leave Freris is her sight.

The last is her hearing.

(The last thing Freris hears, before darkness takes her, is:  _ no, no, no-  _

The last thing Freris hears is a song that is viciously angry, terribly wretched; not a princess’ mourning but a sister’s; a song as broken as Freris has ever imagined- shattered, and sharp for it, as a sword’s broken blade.)

**[twenty]**

When Gandalf hands her Thrain’s key, her first thought is,  _ so he is dead. _

Her second is,  _ I am an orphan, then. _

Her third is,  _ I can go home. _

Her fourth:  _ who will rule in my stead? _

**[twenty-one]**

Thoris feels nothing, when she sees Bilba for the first time, apart from a vague irritation and then sheer disgust at her unprofessionalism. 

(At the trolls, there is a glint in Bilba’s eye that Thoris feels twinned to something in her own. Chased by wargs and orcs, terrified and helpless, Thoris burns brighter, harder; and Bilba, though she is so terribly  _ soft-  _ Bilba matches her every step of the way.)

**[twenty-six]**

“Take her away,” says Thranduil, and Thoris tosses her head; wrath flickering in her chest and nails digging into her palms hard enough to draw blood. “Keep her there, until she is inclined to tell the truth, even if we are to wait a hundred years.”

“I have never told you an untruth,” Thoris retorts. “I have kept my word, Elvenking, unlike what you or yours has ever done!”

“The dragon Smaug-” he begins.

“I was speaking of imprisoning travelers without just cause,” Thoris interrupts mockingly, feeling satisfaction flood her veins at the dull flush creeping over Thranduil’s face like the sickness he’d shown previously. “Though I suppose it says something that you immediately turned to that.”

“ _ Take her away,”  _ he hisses, and Thoris punches the first one to come- a flame-haired guard with more guts than brains. 

An hour later, in the darkness of the dungeons, Bilba appears out of the shadows, and brings hope with her.

**[fifty]**

The legacy that Thoris Deathsinger leaves for her people is this: peace, and stability, and hope.

It is a wrathful sort of peace, and a vicious sort of stability, and a bitter sort of hope- but that, dear, is Thoris II Deathsinger: contradictions of themselves.

**[four]**

The earliest love Thoris can remember is her sword. She remembers, too, Thror’s rage at that- the indignity, of a  _ dame  _ bearing arms, of a _princess_ bearing a sword-

She remembers weeping in her rooms, for rage and fear and something she did not yet know to call grief; for losing a craft that sang in her bones like a forge-lay. 

She remembers her mother’s arrival at her side, and the kisses she pressed to Thoris’ wrists- the way she folded Thoris’ bruised, child-fat fingers around the sword hilt.

“We also, are daughters of the great,” she said, inexorable and ungentle as a lightning-storm. “And we have wills and courage of our own. Do not bend to them, Thoris. Once bent a little, they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Rather face the wind, and the fire, and the teeth of a storm, though it make you tremble and burn. Take this sword, I say, and teach all those who dare to question your presence to fear your wrath.”

**[nineteen]**

There is a saying in Khuzdul that can best be translated to  _ the blade forged in the hottest fire is the sharpest.  _

And Thoris- Thoris has been forged in the hottest fire of them all.

**[one]**

“You will be queen,” Freris whispers, and it is a prophecy and a hope and a doom, all at once. 

“You will be queen of the Longbeards,” Freris says, “the finest queen that we have ever had.”

Sixteen and young, sixteen and irreverent, Thoris throws her head back and laughs, sunlight limning her unlined face, and says, “They’ll remember me for an entire age.”

Oh, they do, they do, they  _ do. _

**Author's Note:**

> I am complete trash and I know it. 
> 
> Thoris’ mother’s relationship to Thrain is, like, probably the shittiest it can get and not result in homicide. Thoris’ mother’s speech is a paraphrase from Erendis’ quote to Ancalime: “We, also, are daughters of the great, and have wills and courage of our own. Therefore do not bend, Ancalime. Once bend a little, and they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Sink your roots into the rock, and face the wind, thought it blow away all your leaves.” 
> 
> Talk to me about the parallels between her and Erendis, and a fem!Thorin and Ancalime, talk to me about Tar-Miriel being hidden in Numenor and watching as her entire city drowns around her- about Thoris watching Erebor being taken by a fucking dragon- 
> 
> I’m just saying, I need more feminist parallels.
> 
> Thranduil’s ‘hundred years’ quote is taken from the movie.
> 
> Talk to me about a Thorin Oakenshield who is desperately ambitious, who is grasping and yearning; about a Thoris Deathsinger who is known for her mourning but cannot allow herself to weep; about the only Queen of the Longbeards who dies before she can rule over her people proper- 
> 
> TALK TO ME ABOUT A FUCKING TEENAGED GIRL WHO WATCHES HER SISTER DIE BUT DECIDES TO MOVE ON AND LEAD HER PEOPLE THOUGH THEY DON'T WANT HER, THOUGH THEY DON'T THINK HER CAPABLE, THOUGH SHE'S THE ONLY FUCKING PERSON TO BELIEVE IN HERSELF, AND HOW SHE IS BETTER AT IT THAN ANYONE ELSE.


End file.
